Mental hospitals and the public : the need for closer co-operation / by Lt.-Colonel J.R. Lord, C.B.E., M.D., F.R.C.P. Edin.

  • Lord, J. R. (John Robert), 1874-1931
Date:
1927
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Mental hospitals and the public : the need for closer co-operation / by Lt.-Colonel J.R. Lord, C.B.E., M.D., F.R.C.P. Edin. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    For a long time now tlie word “ asylum ” has been used to denote an institu for receiving, maintaining and ameliorating the condition of people suffering J physical or mental defects and maladies. Its specific use as the designation of an institution for the insane seems to from the early part of the seventeenth century, and became common during following century. It cannot by the greatest stretch of imagination be rightly ap] to a place of detention. From 1845 onwards it has had a legal definition. Ir preface to the first edition of Archbold’s Lunacy Law occurs the following paragra' 44 Public asylums are provided, private establishments are licensed, and hosp registered, etc.” 44 Every precaution is taken that none but persons who are r< insane, and proper objects for detention under care and treatment . . It is clear then that 44 asylum ” should never have been used to designab institution for those mentally afflicted, because it implies (a) a place which pe seek as a fixed “ home,” and (b) a place which shelters and cares for those who i shelter and care, but does not detain them. The same objection might be raised in this connection to the word “ hospil but the latter is a better word in that it essentially denotes a temporary resting p] and as regards meaning its companion words are 44 Inn ” and 44 Hotel.” It is interesting to note that psychiatry as far back as July 27, 1841 was begin to feel the incubus of the terms 44 lunatic ” and 44 lunatic asylum ” imposed by law, for at the first meeting of the Medico-Psychological Association held on day the following resolution was passed : 44 That by the members of this Association the terms * lunatic ’ and 4 lum asylum ’ be abandoned except for legal purposes and that the terms 4 insane peri and 4 hospital for the insane ’ be substituted.” The term 44 hospital,” applied originally to travellers’ rest houses, has now c to mean an institution for the care of the sick or injured, or of such as require me< or surgical treatment, and, as we have seen, came about through the latter b cared for in the hospital of the Knight Hospitallers in Jerusalem. Others established in Europe soon afterwards, at the initiative of the religious military oi and religious houses, chiefly to combat plague and other infectious diseases i the East. No doubt many of those treated in these institutions were mental ( whose sickness in mind was associated with obvious bodily disease. Later, a: have seen, most of the insane were not so fortunate for several centuries. Two of the oldest separate hospitals in this country were those founded